In Winter Semester 2024/25 the WATER EVER Thesis revisits a topic that has resurfaced organically over time within the studio: designing with water at the core. Each time, the approach evolves- responding to new questions, new contexts, and new urgencies-while continuing to build a shared body of research and design inquiry. 

WATER EVER is about designing with water challenges at the core such rainwater harvest, sponge designs, resilient architecture, unconventional water sources, proposing social structures of water. The increase in extreme conditions related to water in different contexts, such as drought or flooding, and their geographic, social and economic consequences, displays how fragile our living and built environments can be. 

The studio brief opened the path for the students to explore water challenges as the focus of experimental typologies at different scales in specific sites. Each group focused on a specific issue related to water, either water scarcity or water excess, or both according to season, in a site to which they had a personal insight or a research interest to be deepened. 

We researched examples of rainwater, dew and fog harvesting, projects that retain water to bring back vegetation to arid areas, sponge city designs and the integration of water in architecture as a resource for the community.